Google+ Boasts of Over 20 Million Users but Businesses Have Nothing to do With it

Google's latest social networking site Google+ (or Google Plus) now boasts of over 20 million users but it surprisingly Business Profiles have nothing to do with it.

According to Web traffic watcher comScore, Google+ has over 20 million unique visitors not counting those who have signed in using their iPhone and Android devices.

Google+ has turned out to be most popular in the U.S. (5.31 million) and India (2.85 million), followed by UK, Canada and Germany.

Despite its phenomenal success, Google has continued to prevent businesses from using its new service.

Earlier this month, Google+ had to pull the plug on Business Profiles as the pages of the social networking service were not optimized for businesses.

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According to Christian Oestlien, Google+'s product manager, Google+ is currently "focused on optimizing for the consumer experience". However, "we have a great team of engineers building a similarly optimized business experience for Google+," he said.

Google has started a pilot run for Business Profiles by opening an "Entity Profile" application, which saw a flood-rush of companies, nonprofits, bands and other entities that wanted a piece of action in the fledgling social network.

However, Google isn't apparently prepared for the overwhelming response.

"With so many qualified candidates expressing intense interest in business profiles, we've been thinking hard about how to handle this process. Your enthusiasm obligates us to do more to get businesses involved in Google+ in the right way, and we have to do it faster. As a result, we have refocused a few priorities and we expect to have an initial version of businesses profiles up and running for EVERYONE in the next few months. There may be a tiny handful business profiles that will remain in the meantime solely for the purpose of testing how businesses interact with consumers," Oestlien said in a blog post.

"Doing it right is worth the wait. We will continue to disable business profiles using regular profiles. We recommend you find a real person who is willing to represent your organization on Google+ using a real profile as him-or-herself," he said.

Meanwhile, Google+ will select a limited number of business partners for a test period, he added.

And, Google+ has already begun acting tough. For instance, the profiles of the blog Search Engine Land, as well as Ford and Sesame Street, were all deleted. Some, like the blog Mashable, escaped the axe because it was transferred in the name of the site's CEO, Pete Cashmore. The page already has over 109,000 followers.

Google's move has left many businesses bitter and Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land, didn't hesitate to say that it smacks of favoritism.

"I know you have great plans to have super wonderful business profiles eventually. But if you're going to only let a "tiny" number of businesses operate before that, then you taint them and yourselves with favoritism," Sullivan wrote on an open letter.